Le Fumeur de pipe

In the early 1890s Cézanne was mostly holed up on his family's estate outside Aix-en-Provence, the Jas de Bouffan, painting the people who worked the land there. The man with the pipe is thought to be Paulin Paulet, one of those farmhands. Around the same years Paulet sat for the famous Card Players, and here he leans on the kitchen table in the same heavy, patient way, elbow planted, entirely at ease being looked at. Cézanne was not chasing his character. He was after the weight of the pose and the blues of the working clothes. Look at the corner of the table, where a bottle and a couple of apples make a small still life folded into the portrait.